絮 (xù): cotton wadding

Meanings

1 cotton wadding
2 cotton fiber
3 fluff
4 to talk at length
5 long-winded

Characters

絮

xù

cotton wadding/fluff/long-winded

Examples

柳絮在空中飞舞，像雪花一样。

Liǔ xù zài kōngzhōng fēiwǔ, xiàng xuěhuā yīyàng.

Willow fluff danced through the air like snowflakes.

老人喜欢絮叨，总是把同样的故事讲了又讲。

Lǎorén xǐhuān xùdāo, zǒngshì bǎ tóngyàng de gùshi jiǎng le yòu jiǎng.

The elderly person likes to ramble, always telling the same stories over and over.

Tips

usage

絮 has two main senses: as a noun it means fluffy fiber (like 柳絮 willow fluff or 棉絮 cotton wadding); as a verb/adjective it describes repetitive, long-winded talk (絮叨 xùdāo).

Components

radical

糸 mì

silk; thread (radical form)

Bottom 糸 — the full silk radical in its uncondensed bottom-position form. It anchors 絮 as something fibrous: cotton wadding, willow catkins, raw floss padding a winter coat. The radical also extends to the metaphorical sense of 絮叨 — speech as long-winded as a trail of floating fluff.

phonetic

如 rú

like; as (here phonetic)

Top 如 supplies the sound — rú drifting to xù in old readings. Originally 如 pictured a woman speaking, meaning 'to follow' or 'like.' Here pure phonetic role; the meaning sits with the silk radical below. Same phonetic appears in 茹 (to eat) sharing the rú reading.